Tag: not mine

by johndsykes86

1. Drag a pen across paper, cutting into the pages and staining the corners with tear marks. Breathe hot, alcohol-scented, breaths into the pages as you internalise your screams. Handle it as though it were poison. Slide it between the leaves of an old dusty book when you wake up, don’t read it again.

2. Feel it in the swell of your chest on good days when the Sun shines and you can hear children laughing. Recognise it in the sounds of the birds singing when you wake early in the mornings and see it curled in the steam from your morning coffee. Intangible, but perfect.

3. Regiment your stanza lengths. Regiment your rhyme schemes. Keep your message simple because that is what your school teacher taught you for an A. Read it back and find no trace of yourself in the printed letters. Leave it on your desk and contemplate a world in which these words are not the ones which would get you wide recognition.